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Monday, 7 September 2009

Guilty?

This piece in the Guardian amused me today. Jeremy Paxman views frogspawn as a guilty pleasure? Huh. That's not the rumour I heard.

A lot of the "guilty" pleasures didn't seem very guilty at all. There must be some worse ones we can come up with, surely? I mean, perhaps not me because of the sad absence of anonymity. I will have to give you some tame ones but I am relying on you to give me something a little guiltier.

Here are a few of my more socially acceptable ones:

1. Faredodging, obviously. It's the new shoplifting. I particularly like it in Brussels because:

a) The likelihood of getting caught is so low; and

b) Apparently if they do catch you, they are HORRIBLE, which just adds to the thrill.

2. I did very much enjoy once "accidentally" kicking a man when he barged past me onto a Circle Line train when I was heavily pregnant. Unfortunately he worked out it was me and called me out on it, and, me crazy and hormonal and him just crazy, we ended up trading blows. I quite enjoyed hitting someone in public with pure fury, until the CFO dragged me away, arms still windmilling, shouting "Like hitting PREGNANT WOMEN do you???".

5. Lurking on Friends Reunited and smirking at the updates from Quaker schoolmates in a superior fashion. Married your school sweetheart and running a pig farm? Run over by your own tractor? Still wifeswapping with the same old crowd? Ha ha ha, gloating superior laughter.

6. Wearing different wigs on consecutive days and watching my colleague's faces struggle with the visual and cognitive dissonance. "You look ... different, Emma. Is it your glasses?".

7. Flicking slugs over the wall into the neighbour's garden.

8. The sound of my children saying "testicules" in their sweet pearly voices. Testicules. Try it yourself. For the more proficient in French, you can try "testicules dégoulinantes".

I'm going to add some anonymous ones later too. Go on, let's beat the Guardian with an unspeakable display of pleasurable badness.

48 comments:

what gives me the greatest guilty pleasure is seeing a schoolmate (7th grade, who was a racist witch), cut hair at a trailer trash, local strip mall. she used to tell me to "get on the boat, b*tch" bec i was "different" and from Pakistan. She and her friends made my junior high school experience a living hell; worse than watching frogspawn in the pond. i so want to drive by in my Beamer& Cantab diploma in hand (sry, know i am namedropping here, but feel is relevant here) and tell her "sucker."

One of my greatest and sadly extinct guilty pleasures used to involve those "ethical low price" supermarket places where they sold everything (rice, soup powder, washing powder etc) loose out of huge bins and you just weighed out what you wanted and paid per ounce/kilo; I used to love standing there running my naked fingers through the lentils for hours. It was bliss. Although the cornflour was even nicer (silky! talc-y!). And it's no surprise that particular chain folded due to high E.Coli rates...

I accidentally sexually aroused a kangaroo - it wasn't intentional, honest. He just liked my aniseed balls, and I was only twelve. I've felt dreadfully guilty ever since and have even considered therapy to obliterate once and for all the horrific picture burnt into my brain of marsupial manhood. It's not exactly a guilty pleasure, I know...but I feel good to have offloaded.I like to startle my neighbour's deaf and incontinent dog by honking my car horn when it lies asleep in the road. The shocked and confused expression on his face always brings a smile to my cruel lips.I love animals really - although you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise.Mya x

Have you seen Tampopo Waffle? This post made me think of naughty lady whose guilty pleasure was clandestine squeezing of soft fruit in supermarket, pummeling peaches etc. (She was chased out of market by manager wielding a flyswat).

I love rifling through other people's medicine cabinets. So fascinating. And I quite like a sneaky bit of chick lit every now and then. I shamefully throw them away or hide them at the back of the cupboards when I'm done with them.

I also like failing to comply with people's dietary requirements when feeding them. Not medical ones, obviously. Just fussy, arsey, annoying ones.

Watching really trashy telly like, 'It's me or the dog', and Wife-Swap, but never when the other half is in, so very rarely, then!

I read the Daily Hate-Mail online for the goss too...

I once shoplifted (admittedly accidentally) a packet of cheese from a LIDL in Duesseldorf - I didn't have a basket, so put it in my pocket, then forgot to pay for it among the other things I'd bought... I occasionally gloat at 'getting one over' on the bigger conglomerates in such a way... Schadenfreude, moi?

Feeding Hibiscus flowers to the Ostrich in the Catalina Island Bird Park. I still worry about the stomach ache he may have gotten. But he was the one who kept eating them, wasn't he? Glancing at people's open calendars (diaries). I don't feel too guilty, though, since I won't open a closed one. After all, I do have some honor...some.

Despite the global trend to downsize engines - I love having a fast car. I just love going really fast. I get goose bumps from the sound of a 911 carrera S. An RS4 makes me stop in the street and turn around. The hoarse roaring of a Maserati gives me shivers. And I love going just a tiny bit faster than the speed limit. That makes even a journey through Belgium exciting.I am a sucker for cars. I know it is unacceptable these days, but I can't help it.

Nursing school has made me clean up my act as I am exhausted and terrified of doing anything wrong and being struck off prematurely.I do like semi-stalking exes on Facebook but that is probably normal.And a big glass of wine in the evening and playing annoying music my kids and dogs hate.And I do like when Paxman gets shirty with University Challenge contestants.

I'm with you on the fur coats. When we went on family shopping expeditions as a child to a local department store, I used to slink off and sit in the middle of the fur coat rails, revelling in their furry splendour, stroking them with small and most likely sticky hands (oh, and sparking a full scale missing child alert in the store).. Deeply un-PC but *sigh* Good Times.

I derive significant satisfaction from the semi-stalking of exes, full stop. One must remain informed.

Other guilty pleasures? Ice cream straight out of the tub. Gossip. Especially vicious gossip about people I don't like. Super especially if they're arrogant. Sneaking outside food into cinemas. Feeling superior to stupid people (even I think this makes me Awful but I still take pleasure). Swearing while driving, very loudly. The thrill of illicit sex.

Don't know if this is a guilty pleasure or early onset OCD, but anything pre-packed I take great joy in finding either the lowest price (ie smoked mackerel) or highest (parmesan cheese) oh and finding the longest sell by date at the back of the shelf...I really need to get a life

There's some really terrible tv I love watching. Napping is a big one. And to combine those - I love eating tortilla chips and watching bad tv and dozing while C is at school and I should be working. These are kind of boring and I'm sure I must have better ones, but I'm groggy from a nap.

I pretend to be an extremely wealthy potential buyer of real estate and call realtors to show me around $12,000,000 properties just for the fun of it.There's also nothing like seeing a formerly attractive classmate who's got fat and old and gone to seed.I also enjoy making faces at other people's children in the grocery line behind their mother's backs.Oh-and watching sad sad anorexia videos on YouTube.

I think I mentioned this before. I evil really annoying kids, the ones that scream and run around and bump into you and their parents do nothing, and are probably on the phone. Sometimes they cry. Very occasionally they tell their mum about the mean lady, at which point they are roundly scolded and I am apologised to and the balance of my twisted little universe is restored.

My guilty pleasure is watching "Supersize vs. Superskinny," where an obese person and a very thin one meet each other in unflattering beige underwear to compare bodies. Then they trade diets for a week to see how the other half eats and hilarity ensues. Very very stupid but strangely addictive.

I love reading about bizarre sexual proclivities, like balloon fetishes and people who like to be squeezed by inanimate objects or to write elaborate erotic stories about being eaten alive. I only enjoy this if the kink in question is not remotely arousing to me personally, which I think makes it a particularly unkind, yet highly addictive, sort of voyeurism. Also, in the end it is in fact weirdly titillating in an elaborately second-hand sort of way.

No anorexia videos but I have certainly spent many hours reading sad pro-ana web forums as well as a certain genre of fiction that dwells perversely lovingly on all the highly satisfying mental acrobatics of control involved while ostensibly being about what a terrible sickness it is. Needless to say the pleasure comes from allowing myself temporarily to inhabit the delightful and dangerous lines of thought, not in any tsk-tsking.

Bonding with one person by saying lots of mean things about someone else who is not present. This is a huge weakness of mine and rather more genuinely awful than the others, which are more just embarrassing/pathetic. But I often find it truly irresistible.

Because I'm new here, I examined my answer very carefully. It couldn't just be something enoyable but distateful (Lucky magazine) or something I know I shouldn't do (shirk on recycling) or something compulsive and wrong (reading ex's wife's blog that I totally Google-stumbled on--wrong or creepy?). I came up with this: watching syndicated episodes of Gilmore Girls daily. I'm completely embarrasesed by it, no one knows I do it, it's a terrible show for many reasons and I really look forward to it.

Margaret, question for you. How could a reasonable person be expected *not* to read ex-wife's blog that they stumbled upon? God, I would be on it 24 hrs/day. And frankly, I love the Gilmore Girls. Have seen every ep. So I suspect you may find more kindred spirits here amongst the commenters than you expected!

I thought of another one. Having imaginary conversations with people I am cross with or want to impress - sometimes in my head but more often out loud, to the surprise of passers by - in which I am witty, forceful and always know the right thing to say. So unlike real life.

Mine is tame compared to some of these excellent if weird admissions - but I *do* take great pleasure in accumulating as many free upscale mini toiletries as I can from hotels. I do feel guilty too, if I have managed to hoodwink the maid by hiding unopened ones in my suitcase so that she has to replenish my supply, and wonder if she will "tell on me" to management. Have been known to loiter around the trolley cart thingy too, but have *never* taken from it, because I'm a well brought up girl. It's not like I can't even afford my own bottle of molton brown, either. Sigh. Still, I love to get home and unpack my stash. And then worry I've been caught on CCTV.

Late to the party again! I LOVE American car chase programmes/shows and could easily watch three or four in a row.

I also read my ex's emails, even though I am engaged to and live with someone else, and am actually friends with the ex IRL. This is far worse than the car chases and I am so paranoid about anyone finding out that I will have to be anonymous in this post - sorry!

Right now I'm drinking wine out of a tumbler so that no one will notice. Drinking at lunchtime (well into the afternoon at present) is an occasional pleasure I feel no guilt for doing, but this secrecy is new and rather awful. Just for today, I won't turn into a wino yet.

Once, my children and I watched our donkey with a massive erection going right down to the ground. One of the children found a long stick and poked the 'fifth leg' which instantly retracted. It was cruelly hilarious.

I normally always tell the truth, even to my own shame or detriment. However, when I do lie I am, as a consequence, completely believed. This isn't so much a guilty pleasure as something I'm rather proud of. Which is a guilty pleasure in itself.

So you're all a bunch of email/diary snooping, pro-ana p*rn reading semi-stalkers. That's a relief, thought it was just me...

My favourite is Lucy though, standing there in raptures with the loose pulses trickling through her warm naked fingers. Reading her comment is MY guilty pleasure.

Guilty pleasure of this sunny hot London day has to be the way the weather has turned the capital into one long American Apparel ad, boys and girls alike - the guilt arises from my inability to give anyone the attention they deserve before being further distracted. I apologise, you are all lovely.

when the triplets were babies i used to wheel them weekly through john lewis china and glass department where £250s worth of cut glass goods stood within nose finger wiping and smashing distance. these days, obviously and imaginatively and successfully home educating, especially when that pisses off the drones.

Those 'bodyshock' programmes, which are just freakshows by another name. You know the ones, 'Half Man Half Tree', 'I survived a 200 lb tumour', 'I'm so fat I might explode', 'Two Headed Sex Change' (okay, the last is a song by The Cramps but you get the idea).

I'm obsessed with programmes about the Third Reich. If there was a Hitler channel, I'd be there all day. The whole enormity of what happened is just mind-boggling and incomprehensible and fascinating.

Provincial Lady, not only do I have that site bookmarked on my laptop and as an app on my iPhone, I'm considering putting it on my Firefox toolbar so I won't have to go to all the trouble of clicking on the drop-down Bookmarks menu. Own your shame.

Walking back to my car in a crowded car-park, laden down with heavy shopping bags, being shadowed by a BMW clearly cruising and looking for a vacant space. I deliberately walked past my car, then all the way down the next row with him following me. I then turned around, walked right past him, dived into my car and drove off before he had a chance to find out where the vacant space was.